MOSS Junkie

RIP Steve Jobs - October 05, 2011

2011-10-05T19:26:00.000-07:00

I was never never a fan. I hated your guts.

But looking back, I hated your guts because you never swayed. You stood firm in what you believed in. I could not. I am weak and come to think of it, the easiest thing for a weak person to do is envy the strong.

I applaud you for what you did. You made technology cool.

Set-SPSite throws Object reference not set to an instance of an object error message

2011-02-10T16:45:00.001-08:00

Background: Recently I moved some content databases from one farm to another. The only major difference between the content databases’ source web application and destination web application was the authentication provider. The source had Classic Authentication and the destination farm’s web application had Claims Based Authentication. Both the farms were in the same domain.

Issue: After moving the databases, I wanted to run some clean up tasks on the sites on the destination server. One of the task was assigning the site new owner. While iterating the sites through PowerShell, and running Set-SPSite cmdlet on it, I started seeing following error message:

Set-SPSite : Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

At line:1 char:11

+ Set-SPSite <<<< http://<servername>/sites/<sitename> -OwnerAlias "i:0#.w|domain\siteadmin.user" -Verbose

+ CategoryInfo : InvalidData: (Microsoft.Share...SPCmdletSetSite:

SPCmdletSetSite) [Set-SPSite], NullReferenceException

+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPCmdletSetSite

Resolution: After trying various options (backup-restore/detach-attach/recreate the web application, etc), I tried remounting database to see if it’ll fix the entries and voila it started working!

Dismount-SPContentDatabase -Identity <databasename>
Mount-SPContentdatabase <databasename> -WebApplication http://<webappurl>

Hope this helps!

Using powershell to create site collections from custom web template

2011-01-25T07:09:00.000-08:00

Recently we wanted to create multiple site collections from site templates. This was a pretty easy thing to do in SharePoint 2007 – save site as template .stp add the template using CA and you are ready to churn out site collections using the template. The process changed in SharePoint 2010. The "save site as template" now saves it as a web solution package (.wsp) and is now treated as any other wsp in SP2010 world. You have to add the solution and then deploy it. Unfortunately, this is not it. You have to either follow a whole lot of manual steps or achieve this programatically.

Here’s an excellent article that provides manual steps on Implementing Site Templates on SharePoint 2010.
I found an excellent article to achieve this programatically: Programmatically creating Sites and Site Collections from a Custom Web Template
I pretty much used the above blog by Waldek Mastykarz and created a powershell script version for you any one interested:
######start script############
######## Initialize variables ##########
$webApp = "http://clientcompany/"
$ownerAlias = "domain\sitecollectionOwner"
$projDB = "clientcompany_proj_Content"
$deptDB = "clientcompany_dept_Content"
$deptQuota = "Departments Site"
$funcQuota = "Functional Site"
$projQuota = "Projects Site"
$solutionPath = "C:\Clients\ClientCompany\CODE\SiteTemplates\"
$projSolutionName = "Project Team Site.wsp"
$funcSolutionName = "Department Team Site.wsp"
$deptSolutionName = "Function Site.wsp"
$funcTemplateName = "Department Team Site"
$deptTemplateName = "Function Site"
$projTemplateName = "Project Team Site"
######## AddInstallSolution function##########
function AddInstallSolution
{
PARAM([string]$siteUrl, [string]$solutionName)

write-host -ForegroundColor DarkGreen Adding template to root site
Add-SPUserSolution -LiteralPath $solutionPath$solutionName -Site $siteUrl

write-host -ForegroundColor DarkGreen Installing template solution
Install-SPUserSolution -Identity $solutionName -Site $siteUrl

$solution = Get-SPUserSolution $solutionName -Site $siteUrl

do
{
write-host waiting ...
Start-Sleep -Seconds 5
}
until ($solution.Status -eq "Activated")

}
######## CreateSite function##########
function CreateSite
{
PARAM([string]$siteUrl, [string]$siteName, [string]$templateName, [string]$dbName, [string]$quotaName)
write-host -ForegroundColor DarkGreen creating site $siteName
$solutionName = ""
switch($templateName)
{
$deptTemplateName { $solutionName = $deptSolutionName }
$projTemplateName { $solutionName = $projSolutionName }
}
#create site using New-SPSite
$site = New-SPSite $siteUrl -Name $siteName -OwnerAlias $ownerAlias -ContentDatabase $dbName -QuotaTemplate $quotaName
#install wsp on the newly created site
AddInstallSolution $siteUrl $solutionName
#Get the template installed from the solution
$webTemplates = $site.RootWeb.GetAvailableWebTemplates(1033)
$webTemplates | Where { $_.Title -eq $templateName } | ForEach-Object { $webTemp = $_ }
if($webTemp)
{
#we found the template - now let's apply it to the root web
$web = Get-SPWeb $siteUrl
$web.ApplyWebTemplate($webTemp.Name)
$web.Dispose()
}
$site.Dispose()
}
#Create project team sites
write-host 1. Creating Project team sites
CreateSite $webApp"projects/proj1" "Project 1" $projTemplateName $projDB $projQuota
CreateSite $webApp"projects/proj2" "Project 2" $projTemplateName $projDB $projQuota
#Create department team sites
write-host 2. Creating departmental team sites
CreateSite $webApp"departments/HR" "Human Resources" $deptTemplateName $deptDB $deptQuota
CreateSite $webApp"departments/IT" "Information Technology" $deptTemplateName $deptDB $deptQuota

######end script############

The script has a fairly simple logic

Create a site by calling the local CreateSite function with various parameters
CreateSite function creates a SharePoint site collection using New-SPSite cmdlet.
It then calls AddInstallSolution function to add the .wsp file into the site collection’s solution store and activate’s its feature.
CreateSite function then retrieves the site template from the newly activated feature and applies it to the root web of the site collection.

Note: This is my first real world powershell script and I am not sure if I’ve followed the best practices and/or ps scripting standards for the above script.

Create Custom SPGroup and assign Web and List

2009-07-10T16:18:00.001-07:00

Wow! 3^rd blog in almost 2 years. Well here it is...
The code below shows how to create a custom SPGroup and assign appropriate permissions on the site and list

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://sitename"))

{

SPWeb web = site.AllWebs[0];

//use the web owner group as the owner for this new group

SPGroup groupOwner = web.SiteGroups.GetByID(int.Parse(web.Properties["vti_associateownergroup"]));

string groupName = "My Custom Group";

web.SiteGroups.Add(groupName, groupOwner, null, "Custom SharePoint Group for Demo");

//retrieve the newly added group to set roles for it

SPGroup wcmGroup = web.SiteGroups[groupName];

//get the designer role definition to assign to our custom group

SPRoleDefinition designerRoleDefinition = web.RoleDefinitions["Design"];

//assign designer role to our custom group at the web level

SPRoleAssignment roleAssignment = new SPRoleAssignment(wcmGroup);

roleAssignment.RoleDefinitionBindings.Add(designerRoleDefinition);

web.RoleAssignments.Add(roleAssignment);

wcmGroup.Update();

SPList customList = web.Lists["CustomList"];

if (!masterPageGallery.HasUniqueRoleAssignments)

{

masterPageGallery.BreakRoleInheritance(true);

}

//we have unique role assignments

//assign reader role to our custom group for the list

SPRoleDefinition readerRoleDef = web.RoleDefinitions.GetByType(SPRoleType.Reader);

roleAssignment = new SPRoleAssignment(wcmGroup);

roleAssignment.RoleDefinitionBindings.Add(readerRoleDef);

customList.RoleAssignments.Add(roleAssignment);

customList.Update();

web.Update();

}

Happy Coding!

Access Denied error on enabling Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure

2007-12-21T11:34:00.001-08:00

When trying to enable Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure on a site created using team site (basically a WSS site), I got an Access Denied error message. I found a very good blog by Vincent Rothwell - Activating Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure - Access Denied. The steps require couple IIS resets and switching application pools - a daunting task if it's a live production environment.

Upon further investigation I found out that if no site collection on a web application is created with publishing feature, you cannot enable the Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure on a WSS Site (needs further validation). There is a simple workaround that has allowed us to enable Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure on our WSS site:

Create a new site collection and use Publishing (Collaboration Portal) template at say: http://<portalurl>/sites/test
Enable the Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure on your required site collection
Delete the temporary site.

If I find more details on this, I will continue to add my findings.

Uncheck "Add as a new version to existing files" checkbox on Upload.aspx in MOSS 2007

2007-12-19T13:02:00.000-08:00

Steps listed below require modifying the original MOSS files and may be unsupported. Be sure to backup original and modified files.

I was recently asked by my client to have the Add as a new version to existing files option on the upload pages to be "unchecked" by default. This can come in handy on multiple file upload process. Multiple file upload process doesn't "complain" and silently overwrites or ignores existing files.

Unlike v2/2003, this is very easy to do in MOSS/WSSv3:

Open the file Upload.aspx in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\

Locate following tag:
<asp:CheckBox id="OverwriteSingle" Checked="false" Text="<%$Resources:wss,upload_document_overwrite_file%>" runat="server" />

Change Checked="true" to Checked="false"

Do the same for the OverwriteMultiple tag:
<asp:CheckBox id="OverwriteMultiple" Checked="false" Text="<%$Resources:wss,upload_document_overwrite_version%>" runat="server" />

Save the file (no IISRESET needed)